Samsung Galaxy S III visits FCC wearing AT&T's bands

The Samsung Galaxy S III has yet to be introduced by a North American carrier. Still, the handset will eventually be offered in the States, so it made sense for the phone to visit the FCC. The interesting thing is that the version that stopped by the Feds carried AT&T's HSPA+ pipeline but not T-Mobile's. Those using this particular device with T-Mobile would be living on the EDGE so to speak.

The GT-I9300

We know that this is not the model coming to the U.S. because there is no LTE connectivity. Actually, the best way to determine which version of the Samsung Galaxy S III was involved with the FCC visit is to sneak a peek at the label. Sure enough, the label happens to read model number GT-I9300 which is the international model of the phone.

in order for a device to be allowed to be sold/used in america, it must go through the FCC.

What is disappointing is that this is not a pentaband radio equiped device so you cant use it on T-Mobile unless you are in one of the new 1900mhz zones. Samsung pulled off pentaband with the Nexus, so they could have done it here..

It is not looking good to see an american branded Exynos SGS3.... and that makes me uber sad.

Any chance AT&T would offer the non-LTE Exynos version and the Qualcomm LTE version? I love my LTE Qualcomm Galaxy Note, but my GS2 with an Exynos...before AT&T started pushing the Skyrocket with crapdragon...seemed smoother on some things...

I was holding out hope, but with the HSPA+ radio only at 21mpbs, it becomes less likely. If T-Mobile were smart they would get the 21mb/s and tout the fact that its the only quad core SGS3 in america. But like all carriers, they will more than likely make the moronic decision to tout HSPA+ 42mb/s over having the best hardware. Even though, in real life, its unlikely that you will see over 21mb/s in speed tests all that often.

Keep your fingers crossed, but dont get your hopes too high is what I'm trying to say.

arrgghh thats right tmobile and there HSPA+ at 42mbs,
i really want this phone (even though ill get it regardless of what chip it uses) but i will keep my fingers crossed.
Right Tmo is marketing the 42mb speeds soo that jus pushes my hope a bit farther..

I don't think carriers trust the average American consumer (and with good reason, mind you) to understand the difference between a quad-core Exynos and a dual-core S4. This is their own fault, of course, for jamming download/upload speeds down everyone's throats with all their "4G/network coverage" marketing rather than emphasizing the difference between phone hardware. I'd gladly take an Exynos-powered SGSIII on Sprint's crap 3G network than an S4-powered SGSIII on Verizon's "blazing fast LTE" because 99% of when I use my phone I'm not downloading megabytes and gigabytes of data, I'm using it for other things. If I need to download something huge, I'll make sure to do it where there's wifi. As far as browsing speed goes, most of the time I can live with 3G, and if I'm streaming a video I'm always within wifi range anyways.

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